07.29. | Prater Adventures and the Unmissable Lángos

We have to admit there was a certain amount of recklessness involved when, a week in advance and right in the middle of wildly changeable summer weather, we pointed at Vienna's Prater on the map and said: that's where we're going. The universe apparently rewarded our courage—or perhaps our magic simply worked—because, as the photographs and videos prove, we ended up with magnificent weather.

Of course, we didn't leave everything to chance. We opened the evening with a short but highly effective shamanic ritual and collectively chased away the rain clouds. Seriously. The sun came out almost immediately after we finished.

You're welcome, Vienna.

Before we released our artistic selves among the glittering shooting galleries and spinning amusement rides, we fitted in a little technical work.

Our group is slowly maturing into a veteran photography commando, so we opened Snapseed and returned to the mysterious world of double exposure. (Yes, regular readers are probably remembering our wildly popular, thoroughly over-read post on the subject. We are obsessed. We admit it.)

Flash mob. Circle up. Split into pairs.

As a warm-up, everyone had to create a double-exposure masterpiece of their partner, retouch it on the spot, and immediately upload it to our constantly active WhatsApp group, which now has more than one hundred members.

No pressure.

Then came level two: photograph your partner from an unusual angle while still making the full monumental, gloriously kitschy madness of the Prater visible in the background.

The Android camp suffered heavy casualties—or perhaps we were simply useless at finding the correct menu option; history has chosen not to preserve the truth. Meanwhile, the Apple faithful clicked away triumphantly, producing beautifully blurred trails of light.

After the technical battle came the deserved reward.

Everyone jumped onto whichever amusement-park monster called to them most loudly. And naturally, no Prater experience would have been complete without the holy grail: lángos with garlic, sour cream and cheese. Without it, an amusement park is really just... a park.

Our weather magic apparently covered sunshine but not temperature. By the end of the cool evening we therefore made an executive decision: to avoid freezing to death, the following Tuesday, August 5, we'd retreat into a friendly warm studio.

There we'll try studio photography, where the wildest thing we are likely to encounter is a badly adjusted flash.

Come along next time too.

Part of the BANHALMI ecosystem

For the professional context and practical side of portrait photography, visit the BANHALMI professional website. Related art series, books and exhibitions are preserved in the BANHALMI ART archive.